K.R. Meera is one of Malayalam’s most popular writers, known to readers of English for the much-acclaimed ‘Hangwoman’ (2014), described as a contemporary epic. In her latest novel in translation, ‘The Gospel of Yudas’, she looks back on the Emergency and its effect on Naxalites in Kerala.
The protagonist, Prema, is obsessed with ‘Yudas’, a former Naxalite, who is living with the guilt of having spilled information about his comrades under police torture, and is atoning his lapse by retrieving dead bodies from lakes.
